The CEO of Binance, Chengpeng Zhao has posted a Twitter thread clarifying that Binance does not own any equity in Zanmai Labs, the owner of WazirX.
WazirX is an Indian crypto exchange platform that is currently being investigated by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for money laundering under the FEMA Act.
ED has also frozen the platform’s bank assets worth Rs.67.64 crore for money laundering.
Zhao mentions how the above stated allegations against WazirX and Zanmai Labs are of ‘deep concern’ to Binance. He promises to work with the ED in any way possible.
Zhao clarified that although Binance posted a blog stating that it had acquired WazirX in 2019, the transaction was never completed.
The CEO said that Binance only provides wallet services to WazirX as a tech solution. There is also integration using off-chain txn.
He further tweeted, “WazirX is responsible for all other aspects of the WazirX exchange, including user sign-up, KYC, trading and initiating withdrawals.”
In response to these tweets, Nischal Shetty, the founder of WazirX tweeted, “WazirX was acquired by Binance…Binance operates crypto to crypto pairs, processes crypto withdrawal…”
He also says that Binance owns the WazirX domain name, has root access to the AWS servers, has all the crypto access and crypto profits.
Zhao responded to these allegations saying “Binance provides wallet services for WazirX..WazirX domain is transferred to our control…We were given a shared access to an AWS account.”
He further said that they could shut down WazirX, but can’t as it would hurt users. He completely denies Binance having control of “user sign-up, KYC, trading and initiating withdrawals.”
He maintains that WazirX’s founding team controlled the operations of the platform.
